Keeping Bees with a Smile by Fedor Lazutin

Author:Fedor Lazutin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Society Publishers

The Hive Entrance

In the initial models of my horizontal hives I arranged the entrances precisely as was recommended in the majority of do-it-yourself manuals for building hives—that is, one slit-shaped entrance near the bottom, and a second round entrance approximately halfway up the front wall. But then came years of experiments, observations, and conversations with experienced beekeepers. And here’s what I arrived at.

Presently, I only make one entrance, a slit-shaped one, across the entire length of the front wall of the hive. I only leave a portion of it open, a six- to ten-inch (15–25-cm) segment facing the area where the nest frames are located. The remaining segment I seal using a strip of jute rolled up into a rope and pushed in with my hive tool. Some other available material could be used instead. Why should the entrance extend across the entire front wall? It’s necessary in light of the versatility of the horizontal hive—namely, when temporarily keeping two colonies in a single hive, when shifting the position of the brood nest, and in a number of other cases.

The entrance should measure half an inch (12–13 mm) top to bottom—wider than it was before (3/8 inch; 8–10 mm); this allows the bees to walk along the top and bottom without getting in each other’s way. This is especially important during the main honeyflow, when the bees usually exit the hive along the top entrance surface (upside down) when leaving to search for nectar, and use the bottom surface when returning. That is, the extra entrance space makes it much more flexible.

In the recent models of my hive, I’ve raised the entrance higher from the bottom of the hive. If there’s a lot of free space beneath the frames (five to six inches; 12–15 cm), the entrance can be positioned directly below the lower frame bar (181/2 inches or 47 cm from the hive ceiling), or a bit higher. If there’s not that much open space (say, a hive has an internal depth of 20 inches or 50 cm), I place the entrance 18 inches (40 cm) from the top bar of the frame (the ceiling of the hive).

An entrance raised above the bottom of the hive has several advantages:

1. There’s no longer any need for a landing board, since its purpose is now served by the front wall of the hive (there’s more than four inches or 10 cm of space beneath the entrance);

2. There’s no longer any danger of the entrance being blocked by the snow or by dead bees during the winter (see photo 34, color insert);

3. An entrance raised above the bottom of the hive helps lower a colony’s mite load, since the bees are much less likely to crawl around on the bottom of the hive and come in contact with mites that have fallen there.

When carrying out various procedures with bee colonies (most of which fall under the category of “advanced” natural beekeeping), the entrance has to be shifted at certain times of the year—that is, one segment has to be opened while the other has to be sealed.

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